The Supreme Court this week dealt a blow to the nation’s struggling labor unions. In a 5-4 decision along ideological lines, the court ruled that some government workers who decline membership in the unions that represent them can’t be forced to pay collective bargaining fees.

Just over 11 percent of the U.S. workforce belongs to a union today, the lowest rate in more than 70 years.

That’s a far cry from the boom in organized labor that began during World War II with a surge in manufacturing and industrial growth. By 1945, more than 26 percent of the nation’s civilian wage and salary workers were members of unions, nearly quadruple the rate from the previous decade. The spike led to higher wages in a range of industries, fueling America’s burgeoning middle class. Through the 1950s and ’60s membership rates continued to climb, reaching a peak of nearly 27 percent by 1953, according the Bureau of Labor Statistics. (The BLS differentiates the rate of union membership from that of union representation, which is always slightly higher; by the mid-1950s roughly 35 percent of workers were represented by unions.)

But as the economy sputtered in the 1970s, these rates began to steadily decline. Much of this drop has occurred in the private sector, where fewer than 7 percent of workers now belong to unions, the BLS reports. That’s less than five times the public sector’s membership rate, which still hovers above 35 percent. But that too has been on the wane, and is likely to decline further as a result of the court’s decision.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday removed a 40-year-old cap on the total amount of cash individuals can contribute to political candidates and party committees. The latest in a string of rulings chipping away at longstanding campaign finance limits, the court’s 5-to-4 decision in McCutcheon v. Federal Elections Commission is expected to let new flood of money pour into America’s already cash-saturated political process.

What the decision actually does

It removes the cap on the combined amount of cash that any one person can directly give to candidates running for federal office, or to political party committees.Although the court maintained the existing cap of $5,200 as the most any donor can directly give to a single candidate, it got rid of the limits on combined contributions.

Up until now, an individual donor could give no more than $48,600 in combined contributions to candidates, and no more than $74,600 in combined contributions to local and national party committees. Combined, $123,200 was the maximum amount a single contributor could give in a two year period. Now there is no limit.

To put that in perspective, let’s say a single donor were to give $5,200 to every single House and Senate candidate from one political party in an election with 468 House and Senate seats up for grabs. The total contribution would be $2,433,600. If you’ve got the money to burn, there’s nothing stopping you anymore. A nice infographic in the Washington Post illustrates the new formulas.

What was the logic behind the court’s ruling?

The five justices in the majority are the usual suspects: the same conservative side of the bench responsible for striking down at least five other campaign finance restrictions over the last eight years, including the landmark Citizens United decision in 2010. In so doing, the court has succeeded in chipping away at many of the election spending reforms from the 1970s that came about in the wake of the Watergate scandal.

Like in previous cases, the McCutcheon ruling was rooted in the majority’s strongly held conviction that political money is a form of speech protected under the First Amendment, and that the government should have only a limited role in regulating it.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said that the existing contribution limits violated the First Amendment. While noting that some level of government regulation of campaign finance is necessary to prevent and root out corruption, he argued that placing aggregate limits on campaign contributions ultimately stifles constitutionally protected political speech.

“There is no right more basic in our democracy than the right to participate in electing our political leaders … The government may no more restrict how many candidates or causes a donor may support than it may tell a newspaper how many candidates it may endorse … We do not doubt the compelling nature of the “collective” interest in preventing corruption in the electoral process. We permit Congress to pursue that interest only so long as it does not unnecessarily infringe an individual’s right to freedom of speech.”

How did the dissent respond?

Not cheerfully. In his fervent dissenting opinion, Justice Stephen Breyer argued that the decision directly increases the power and influence of the wealthy elite while muffling the voices of the greater public. Removing spending limits, he said, invites corruption and further encourages a big money, pay-to-play political process.

“In reality, as the history of campaign finance reform shows and as our earlier cases on the subject have recog­nized, the anticorruption interest that drives Congress to regulate campaign contributions is a far broader, more important interest than the plurality acknowledges. It is an interest in maintaining the integrity of our public governmental institutions. And it is an interest rooted in the Constitution and in the First Amendment itself … Where enough money calls the tune, the general public will not be heard. Inso­far as corruption cuts the link between political thought and political action, a free marketplace of political ideas loses its point.”

How did the case originate, and who is this McCutcheon guy?

The case was jointly brought by plaintiffs Shaun McCutcheon, a wealthy conservative Alabama businessman, and the Republican National Committee. McCutcheon had contributed $33,000 to 16 candidates running for federal office in the 2012 election. He said he wanted to give $1,776 each to 12 more candidates, but was prevented from doing so because of the existing spending cap.

In September 2012, a federal district court dismissed the suit on the grounds that the aggregate spending limits adequately withstood First Amendment scrutiny and that the government may justify such regulation as as a means of preventing corruption or the appearance of corruption.

Shortly thereafter, the plaintiffs filed their appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

What’s the difference between this and Citizens United?

Citizens United v. FEC, the landmark 2010 ruling, struck down limits on independent political spending by corporations and unions. It allowed them to make undisclosed contributions of unlimited amounts of money to “independent expenditure” organizations that work on behalf of candidates but do not directly coordinate with them. A subsequent lower court decision allowed individuals to donate unlimited sums to these super PACs as well. The ruling, however, didn’t address caps on direct contributions to candidates.

Conversely, McCutcheon does not apply at all to corporations or unions, and it still requires full donor disclosure. And while the decision gives individual donors the green light to make unlimited aggregate contributions to campaigns or parties, it still limits the amount that can be given to any one campaign or party. But unlike Citizens United, the new flow of money allowed by this decision will be controlled directly by candidates and parties.

I’m going to go out on a limb here in suggesting that the nitty gritty of the Affordable Care Act may not be the most exciting topic of conversation. But now, even as the government settles into shutdown mode, state insurance exchanges across the country are opening their virtual doors for business, offering a healthcare marketplace to the million of uninsured Americans. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation produced this series of short animated explainers on some of the central components of the law and the programs it establishes. These are concepts that get thrown around a lot in the news but are pretty hard to grasp. So take a look (and just maybe, you’ll be the hit of the cocktail party). Also, check out KQED’s comprehensive interactive Obamacare guide to explore the topic in greater depth.

How did the Prop. 8 case go all the way from California to the U.S. Supreme Court? Scroll through this interactive to trace the path. Use the arrows to advance, and zoom in to blow-up text size and images. It can also be viewed in full screen mode (click on bottom left button).

Update July 24: The Supreme Court sent a challenge to the University of Texas’ affirmative action admissions process back to a lower court.

The compromise ruling throws out the decision by the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld the Texas admission plan.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the court, said the appeals court did not test the Texas plan under the most exacting level of judicial review. He said such a test is required by the court’s 2003 decision upholding affirmative action in higher education.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was the lone dissenter.

Next week the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to announce its decision on the constitutionality of race-based admissions policies at public universities. It will be the latest ruling in a long history of challenges to various affirmative action efforts. Specifically, the court will determine whether the goal of greater racial diversity on campus justifies preferential treatment for minority applicants.

Abigail Fisher, a white honors student who was rejected from the University of Texas in 2008, didn’t think so. She sued the school, claiming that its race-conscious admissions policy unfairly favored black and Hispanic applicants over whites and Asians. She said:

“There were people in my class with lower grades who weren’t in all the activities I was in who were being accepted into UT, and the only difference between us was the color of our skin… For an institution of higher learning to act this way makes no sense to me.”

The case came before the Supreme Court last October. The court’s upcoming ruling could have broad implications for universities and employers around the country.

Scroll through the timeline below for a history of game-changing events in the evolution of affirmative action.

On March 26, the U.S. Supreme Court hears oral arguments on the constitutionality of Proposition 8, California’s same-sex marriage ban. Since voters approved the measure in 2008, there has been a dizzying string of state and federal court cases and appeals (and that, of course, doesn’t include the many years of political wrangling over the issue before Prop. 8 passed). Now the decision is in the hands of the High Court’s nine justices. But how did it go all the way from a California ballot measure to a Supreme Court case that could have a huge national impact? This presentation walks you through the many steps of the multi-tiered justice system that Prop. 8 had to pass through on its way to the highest court in the land.

Beneath the presentation is a diagram by the NY Times illustrating the various outcomes of the case.

Note: the presentation is best viewed in full-screen mode; use the arrows to advance and zoom in/out on any text or image

In the week since the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling upholding key parts of President Obama’s health care law (“Obamacare”) – namely, the individual mandate that everyone buy insurance – Americans have been inundated by an endless deluge of analysis and commentary. Making sense of it all is challenging, so here are 10 good resources that help connect the dots.

“The Affordable Care Act, including its individual mandate that virtually all Americans buy health insurance, is constitutional. There were not five votes to uphold it on the ground that Congress could use its power to regulate commerce between the states to require everyone to buy health insurance. However, five Justices agreed that the penalty that someone must pay if he refuses to buy insurance is a kind of tax that Congress can impose using its taxing power. That is all that matters. Because the mandate survives, the Court did not need to decide what other parts of the statute were constitutional, except for a provision that required states to comply with new eligibility requirements for Medicaid or risk losing their funding. On that question, the Court held that the provision is constitutional as long as states would only lose new funds if they didn’t comply with the new requirements, rather than all of their funding.”